Hello, dear listen, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety.
The only Doctor Who podcast, which can no longer remember the
night when we bought one last glass of the house read, with a
painting worth 1000000 US dollars.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James.
I'm Fiona.
So I'm a vineyard and a very sad, poignant, and quite beautiful
moment in history and in this show for this one.
Well, it's time once more for our annual celebrity, historical, and
this time the celebrity is none other than Richard Curtis, the man
who made World War I 5 slappingly hilarious in Black Adder goes
forth, and who turned Christmas into an insufferable ordeal in
love actually.
So let's see how he gets on with history's greatest artist
probably, in Vincent and the doctor.
You know, he also wrote all the Parker and Penelope scenes for
that much enjoyed 2003 Thunderbirds movie, too, don't you?
Don't hold that against him.
No, they're the best parts of it.
They were actually going to do a spinoff.
George Harrison loved it so much.
He was going to do a Parker and Penelope film, but the studios
wouldn't pick it up.
Damn it Where were?
So, Fiona, are you a big fan of love, actually?
I do enjoy it, but I'm not a big fan, no.
Yeah, I've read in preparation for this podcast, a hilarious
article, which I'll fling in the show notes about how truly
horrific it is and how it's about white middle class men being
entitled around various ladies, including Emma Thompson.
A few other people have said that, but not Emma Thompson.
What did you think of it, Fiona?
Well, at the time I just watched it as a fun movie, but I do think
poor Emma, like that's just the heartbreaking moment in it.
I think, um, I always find all the stuff with Hugh Grant a bit
tedious.
But yeah, Emma's little substory was was quite heartbreaking.
Um, if we're talking Richard Curtis films, I much prefer about
time to love actually, which is the film that he may just after
having written Vincent and the doctor.
Ah.
And it's about a character who discovers that he can travel
backwards and forwards in his own timeline.
And so he, he keeps doing over his life to try and get the, you
know, like a life that he's happy with.
And in the end, he would, well, I'm not.
In the end, he joins the 1st order and betrays them to the
resistance.
It becomes Ginger Hitler.
And surprise, surprise, Bill Nice.
So did he do the tall guy?
So Emma Thompson and Jeff Goldblum.
I think it's a sort of very early, very, it's a very early Richard
Curtis thing, and it includes a superb kind of take on how awful
Rowan Atkinson is as a person, played by actual Rowan Atkinson
which I thought was pretty brave.
So, uh, it's it's pretty good.
He's um, he is a strange choice as a Doctor Who writer, I think.
Well, it worked.
We did have this earlier in the season where we had Simon Nye
writing Amy's choice, you know, someone who's new to Doctor Who
and wasn't necessarily a sort of Doctor Who-ish kind of writer.
And I think that it means that the show does things that it might
not otherwise do.
And, you know, it's something that Russell had tried to do.
Um, you know, there was always that sort of Stephen Fry script
that was going to happen in Russell's, uh, yeah.
But Moffatt actually brings it off here.
And I think it's sort of super successful.
I think also possibly the reason why it's successful is because
Richard Curtis had had this idea many years before.
And how much of it was the idea because I didn't Moffatt rewrite a
lot of the monster stuff.
He came to him with the idea.
Okay for like, well, you know, like the basic idea, like Vincent
and the doctor.
From memory, a lot of the dialogue was rewritten.
And he asked Moffatt to be quite brutally honest and Moffatt was
his code.
And then he never came back.
I think, I mean, there is Richard courtesy dialogue and there's a
Richard courtesy sort of sensibility.
There's a sort of, there's an upper middle classness to its
concerns, I think.
So we're in an art gallery in Paris.
If only we were in that art gallery in Paris. one of my favourite
art galleries in the world.
Except there's no, the Van Gogh room looks nothing like that
octahedron, but I love the Muse d'Orsee.
They could have gone to Amsterdam.
Yeah, yeah, Gael Andy redid it.
It's a beautiful early 19th century train station.
Museato, say. beautiful space and they are actually in it when
they're running around looking up at the roof, but then they run
away to a studio with populated by Bill Nye as queen of the art
world.
You said they're not outside it though.
No, that's not screen.
Yeah.
So they did, I think they sent a 2nd unit to there to do the sort
of, you know, establishing gallery shots and things, but most of
it is the National Museum in Cardiff.
Ah, okay. which they've used over and over again.
That's what it is then, and it works so well because the
establishing shots are of the roof, and I just, you know, your
brain reads that as, oh, yeah, you're actually in there because
there are stairs like the one that they walk up to with the black
statue.
Yeah.
Okay, clarify, isn't it?
Very clever.
Yeah, it's quite well done, I think.
And then the rest of it's shot in Tregear as part of the block
where they do vampires of Venice.
So the village.
It was very exciting to be back in Port Marion.
I expected to see, I expected to see old sly boots running about
with his gold mask and headless chickens.
There was a lot about chickens, again.
Yeah, yeah, chickens in these stories.
I mean, how do we feel about Van Gogh just personally?
It's perfect placement for what happened with Amy and Rory.
And I think it actually touches very lightly on the depth of the
man.
Obviously because it's family TV.
You can't go too much.
Tony Curran does a beautiful job, but we are doing the accent
aren't we?
I do love that that sort of lampshading.
Oh, you're Dutch, like me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yes, yes.
It really peeves me.
I don't know what Fiona thinks about it.
Like to know, but I just, look, maybe it's because I grew up with
RP and I just remember everyone, but there's a reason RP was
required is because you don't have to turn on the subtitles. which
I have to do for Karen.
Because they throw their lines away.
I have to do it for Matt too.
Young people, they mumble.
I don't have that issue at all.
I find them both very easy to understand.
The only actor.
I ha- have had a problem with in the past was really Sylvester and
that was a case of getting your ear in.
And then once you kind of got used to him, it was okay.
But initially, there was a lot of, Lines that and I guess too, like
because we watched, it's not just a single viewing for a lot of
episodes.
So you might miss it on the 1st go and get it on the 2nd go and
The 10th go and.
But yeah, with Karen.
I've never I've never had a problem.
And same with Matt, but um, Yeah, that's something that's never
really occurred to me.
I think the issue I have with Matt's dialogue is not the inability
to understand his accent, but how fast he speaks.
Yeah, I mean, he has a sort of tendency to throw lines away.
But, I mean, I think the decision to let Tony Curran use his own
accents the right one, because we've seen actors struggle with
kind of accents, and I know that, you know, British actors do
accents, they're very good at it.
But it also kind of gives him a kind of earthiness or something
you know, like that.
There's, There's a sort of strange quality to Vincent as he's
portrayed here, um, because even though he's an artist, I don't
know, there's something about the the rough way that he lives, the
how excluded he is, you know, how different he is from everyone
else. you know, the way he's treated.
And have you ever heard an Antwerp accent?
I think too, in a Doctor Who context.
It's the last thing that you really care about.
Like, you just, it wasn't until the, actually, until he had the
line where saying, oh, you Dutch as well.
It actually hadn't occurred to me.
It just I'd just been watching the story and enjoying it.
So, yeah, I hadn't even sort of thought, oh, he's not speaking in
a Dutch accent because I think you're so used to going to alien
planets and everybody speaks in English in um, received
pronunciation.
You, um, yeah, you just sort of, I think that's the last thing
that really I'm, I was sort of looking for.
I was just so engrossed in the story by that point.
So probably if it had been a feature film, you might have said
well, hey, but I think in a Doctor Who, where it's more about, just
let's have a fun story.
I think I think it's fine.
And we 1st see him actually in that scene in the cafe and that
cafe is actually something that he paints.
It's actually not... very famous painting and it's beautifully
realised, yeah.
Did you get that too, Fiona?
It's the same with the set of his bedroom.
It's just extraordinary.
Yeah, and that was one of the joys of the whole episode.
Most of that cafe was built on location by the production team.
They found something that looked about right, but they built the
awning.
They built the platform, they found the right chairs, they did the
right, they changed the windows of the cafe and lit it. like to be
picture perfect.
I think that the decision to like recreate a bunch of the
paintings, you know, like they recreate the straw hat self
portrait.
They recreate that church, they find a church for him to paint.
Like, I think that's a pretty good decision, but it does.
There's a sort of theme park approach to this like there is to
every historical.
I think it starts that way, but because of the subject matter.
They, you know, like they do start doing the, the shtick, the, oh
look, wow.
Sunflowers, um, it's kind of veering towards the same sort of, what
I think are mistakes, um, in things like Shakespeare code.
I, you know, I don't like that approach to history in a dog
story.
But when they start to delve into his his depression and his
isolation and then they have those beautiful scenes with, uh, him
noticing that, that Amy is sad and she's crying without realising
that scene.
Then it becomes something more, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, you know, the bedroom was somewhere else entirely.
Um, he'd been painting sunflowers for some years, you know, that
cafe. was in Arles, you know, just north of Paris.
Like there's, they collapse his history a bit.
But, you know, there's a reasonable amount of actual concrete
information about his life, and some of it's delivered in that 1st
speech, the Bill Nye speech in the 1st scene, where we just get a
little bit of a summary for the children at home of why Vincent's
important.
I think that's because uh, Curtis, although he was already
familiar with Van Gogh quite a lot, he still went and read a 200
page biography of him in preparation, which is more work than he's
done for a lot of his own film.
Yes.
So he probably had a lot of that at his fingertips.
Yeah, yeah.
So just it was a bit like a Van Gogh 101, but Just with my own
children who at the time they were about sort of roughly 10 and 8
and they wouldn't have had, you know, a detailed knowledge of who
he was.
But it just piqued their interest so that they did after watching
it.
They did want to know more.
And 5 years later, I was actually fortunate enough to take them to
the UK and we went to the National Gallery and um, they were super
interested to see his paintings.
And I've actually got a really cute photo of camera next to the
sunflowers.
Which is beautiful and yeah, and he was like really keen to get
his photo taken with the, um, of course it didn't say for Amy on
the real version.
We did share. disappointing.
How did they react emotionally, because this is some really, this
is big stuff, but I have a great faith in children's understanding
that far more fluidly and far more directly than we do as adults
and I'm really interested in what a 10 and 8 year olds who've been
brought up, I imagine, although, you know, I don't know what you
like with your horses, but I imagine to be honest and speak the
truth.
I know you've got discipline is also required.
But do you, how did they respond?
Were they?
You get you get the blunt truth out of children, don't you?
Yeah, absolutely do.
But to be honest, it's just so long ago when we did that initial
viewing that I can't recall and I was probably too busy sobbing my
eyes out to really care what they were thinking at the time
because I was... one, isn't it?
I hadn't sobbed since, since RTD and Rose leaving, you know, that
as I did with this one.
I had a little cry this morning when I was rewatching it in
preparation for the podcast, I was crying for the last 10 minutes
of the episode.
What I love about that today.
It's Doctor Who fulfilling its educational remit.
Yeah.
You know, way that is not banging you over the head.
I think that the decision, in fact, to ignore sort of to collapse
a lot of the stuff into that last sort of 6 months of Vincent's
life is the right decision because you get to show the important
things, you know, like sunflowers are introduced, that scene with
Amy, with all the sunflowers outside for breakfast on that day.
And then he punctures her sort of excitement by saying, oh, I
don't really like them.
Yeah, how they're quite disgusting.
Yeah, but I think that that's Curtis then getting the chance to
actually do a reading of why he chose those flowers, you know, that
he finds them disgusting.
They are on the border of life and death.
There's something earthy about them.
They fascinated him.
Yeah. than he was in love with their beauty.
He was painting a life painting of a flower, basically.
Yeah, yeah.
And so I think that I think that that was worth doing just to get
those images in and to get that stuff talked about and the fact
that he'd painted heaps of sunflowers, you know, in Paris and
whatever and all years before doesn't actually matter.
And anyone who's sufficiently motivated to learn about Vincent
from watching the episode will go back and and, you know, find out
kind of what the deal was.
So, I, like I thought that I thought that the Shakespeare code
fell down a bit because it didn't engage with any of Shakespeare's
concerns at all and just basically was doing the shtick and
dumping the quotes in.
But I think this does do that.
And it was quite different from the what we know about the real
Shakespeare.
It was kind of like that rock star version, whereas this is trying
to adhere more closely to reality, but you're not feeling the
whole way through that you're being slapped around the head by it
whereas it's not like a massive info dump and you're not being...
You don't feel like you're having history ram down your throat and
the whole sunflower scene was worth doing just for the fact that
visually it was beautiful. like that Amy and her red with all the
yellow and the bright sunshine.
I mean, that's a gorgeous image.
And her smiling.
Yeah.
Just yeah, just beautiful.
Is that before after he says about this, I think that's just
before they go for the walk and he said why you, you know, that
you're crying. you're why you say sad.
And that's a nice contrast to that as well.
I just think that was a really important scene.
Yeah, I mean, I think that scene is unusual because it's the only
one that really touches on the arc.
Um, you know, it could be the doctor and any companion, really.
And Amy, you know, she's sexually confident and she's redhaired
and stuff like that.
So she sort of fits in.
He wants to have lots of babies.
Yes, yeah.
It's the only one that's about the Amy and Rory.
Remember, I've got red hair, okay?
Hi, Fiona.
I don't want to have lots of babies.
T was plenty.
But, I mean, that's the only scene that touches on the wider arc.
And so last week, Rory dies.
Yeah.
And we get a, we get a little hint, don't we, where Amy is
suspicious of the doctor because the doctor's being so nice to her
and taking her to the, to the gallery.
And then we get this where she's crying.
And it's actually going to be incredibly important because this is
sort of paving the way to the idea that memory is important.
And we'll talk more about that.
We're kind of getting ahead of ourselves, but we'll talk more
about that in the finale.
But I don't think we can not remark on it.
It just touches very lightly on the arc and contributes to it very
slightly.
But it's clever too, because it's one that if you had just
watching this as a one off and you didn't know that Rory had died
it wouldn't be like a massive jar.
Yeah, you wouldn't be going like, you could go, oh, there must
have been something happen, but it doesn't really detract from
your overall enjoyment of the episode.
It's not kind of like you had to previously have watched all these
episodes to to be able to follow what's going on.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's right.
And I think it's probably a function of getting someone big like
Richard Curtesy and do you know what I mean?
You're not going to sit down and map out the minutiae of the
season to it.
Yeah.
Yeah, so it's another bit about you not feeling like you're being
slapped around the head with stuff and um, And later where he just
sort of says like he just says Rory, you know, again, that's quite
subtle, really, it's not kind of, doesn't make, it's just that
little gentle reminder to the audience and going, oh, he's not
here.
So if you're your viewer like us, you sort of go, oh, Rory, but if
you weren't watching, you would just go, oh, yeah, whatever, Rory
you know, you wouldn't be it.
It wouldn't be a big distraction.
So, yeah.
And I just love to that sort of subtle body language where when
Vincent is talking to Amy and they're walking along and they're
obviously having like a very emotional moment and the doctor is
just looking more and more uncomfortable and guilty in the
background and and he's sort of, you know, I think he says
something along like, oh, moving on now, you know, just, but yeah
just the look on his face where he's just going, oh, I don't this
we don't want to go here kind of thing.
And at the start where you said about too, in the gallery where, um
yeah, that the whole, oh, you're being so nice to me.
I just think that says wonders about their relationship as well
the fact that they've got that slightly bickering and it's like
it's weird, you're being really nice to me, like what's going on?
Do you want, you know, normally, like, what do you want?
What do you want kind of thing?
And again, like, when sort of she's not looking at him, you can
see him sort of just looking that little bit uncomfortable.
But the whole body language between them and and um, Yeah, the
whole like on-screen chemistry is wonderful between the 2 of
them.
I think they really do work well together.
You know the starry night scene?
Oh, yes.
Where they're lying there.
And like, we can, we can talk about that in more depth, but their
physical closeness.
You know, they're all holding hands and all 3 of them together
like there's a kind of physical warmth between Matt and Vincent as
well.
Yeah, the holding hands thing is not awkward in any way, but the 3
of them are lying there and they're really, really physically
close to one another.
Yeah.
There is something very sweet and sad about how close Vincent
becomes to the doctor.
There's a really, really good moment.
I think, where he says, you know, we've fought monsters together
to the doctor, but on my own.
I don't think I'll do quite so well. that I think works
terrifically well.
Yeah.
The other thing I think is really special is that line where after
the, the monster has accidentally been slain.
That there's so much compassion for starters for the whole death
of the monster.
It's not just like, oh, oops, we, you know.
Sorry, monster, you're dead, which does happen in a lot of
episodes.
It's kind of like, you know, somebody casually dies and it's like
oh, well, moving on.
But there's so much compassion from all the characters and that
whole line of, sometimes winning doesn't, um, I'm not, I'm not
quoting it directly, but the whole, it's not fun to win, you know
you've won, but it doesn't feel good.
And, I think that sort of is a bit with the whole Vincent's a
thing as well, you know, that just like, Not everything is good in
life.
There are these painful moments that we all go through.
Have they even won, I think, is the question there.
They haven't won.
Nobody's won out of the situation.
This poor animal who was in pain and lonely and blind and and, you
know, was, you know, lashing out because it was conceded, yeah.
Yeah, that lashic, that, that actually that was the 1st part
rewatching it that I started to cry because that whole line of
Vincent's about like, oh, it was lashing out and that's what the
how the kids treat me and throw stones at me because they don't
understand and.
Yeah, lashing out because you're hurting.
So sad.
I think that monster is really interesting.
Don't you?
I think there's something symbolically about it.
About birdie num-nums.
It's very Peter Sellers.
Well, it's also very Monty Python, isn't it?
It's actually, no, it's very Spike Milligan.
Do you remember Spike Milliken's drawings of enormous parrot?
in profile in his children's book of milliganimals and silly verse
for kids.
I think it's only Monty Python at the end of that scene once it's
died.
But this is a dead parrot.
So in some way, it and its race represent the human race, that
we're cruel and brutal and we abandon, you know, hurt members or
members that can't keep up and just leave them to suffer.
And that's what's happened to Vincent and Vincent makes that
comparison himself.
So the Crefeus, uh, Tories.
They human beings. we all do it Also, I think that the blindness
of the crofeas, you know, the crofeas, which is lashing out at
people and is blind and is explicitly compared to the people
persecuting Vincent.
It has one less sense than we do.
And there is something about Vincent's ability to see that this
episode kind of plays with.
Yeah.
But also, do you, do you think that, the, um, because you know how
the, the doctor does have a line saying that they're really
vicious and they're, they're killers and that's why we need to
stop this monster because it will just, you know, go around the
village and and kill everybody indiscriminately.
But then, and obviously that girl, and it's wonderful how it is
off camera because obviously she was very, very brutally
murdered.
And the reaction of the doctor to that is, and Amy, all the
characters, it's great because he's not just like, oh, there's a
dead body.
Like he, you can see that he's genuinely going, oh, this is awful
and this poor girl, like he's feeling genuine remorse that this
has happened.
But do you think it was a case of like, she was in the way so he
the monster did kill her or she literally, was in the way and he
didn't see her and accidentally, like, crushed her or, because
we're not quite sure whether she's been ripped apart or just kind
of stepped on and squashed or something.
Isn't there a line about it picking off the week?
I don't remember, but there is a line.
I mean, I think it is brutal.
And that's why I've kind of resisted any reading that sees the
monster as Vincent himself because although there's a sense in
which, no, so there's a tendency for the crofeus to abandon their
week.
And so that makes us think of Vincent.
But I don't think you can read the monster as Vincent just because
of the monster's cruelty.
But the monster does give Vincent something to identify with.
And the reason that Vincent can see it, I think, is because he's
also abandoned and excluded in some way.
Yeah, very much so.
The dualities of the id monster, because we're back to forbidden
planet and the tempest.
Oh, there's a lot of Shakespeare in this, actually.
More so than the Shakespeare code. much more so.
But yeah, because we're talking about fraud emotions and people
working off each other, but yes, the centre of this is actually
Amy.
In fact, most of the season, I wonder how deliberate it is of
Stephen Moffat to make Amy, the centre of every story, much as
Rose was season one.
This is another Amy story, and it's Amy's fraughtness.
So we have the doctor being her, oh, we're back to sex in the city
of the 4 the 4 girls being actually the 4 positions of the ego, 4
positions of the consciousness.
Yeah.
So we've got the doctor as Amy Super Ego in control, but not.
We've got Vincent as her broken heart.
And then we've got the monster as how she's actually feeling.
And then they're all just playing out.
So she always ends up being Samantha, of course.
But just playing out.
But just playing out the, you know, maybe that's why this is
powerful.
I wonder if Curtis was thinking along those lines.
I'd like to think he was, because there isn't a better cypher for
a story like this than the absolute beauty and tragedy, um, the
beauty and the pain of of an artist who paints their own
impossibility to live, the impossibility of dealing with this much
emotion and every painting.
That's why he's worked.
He's, you know, he could say, critics would say technically he's
not the greatest of the impressionists.
It, it, he doesn't have the structure of the formalism.
He doesn't, it's so fast.
It's all intuitive painting.
But that's why people respond to it.
It has the most heart.
Most heart, exactly, and the most expression.
There is no filter.
It is how he feels and children pick up on that.
You said your children were young teenagers when they were
completely drawn to his work in London.
It's this, I think I think everyone feels that everyone who is in
touch with their own feelings.
So that's why it's the strongest episode for me of the season and
perhaps for a very long time.
And really, Bill Nye is therefore the voice of the conscious, the
conscious narrator in this, just by his presence and his metre.
And then there's that moment in the end where his childhood hero
he gets to hug and then the conscious adult self has to step in
because we have to stay in control.
And at the same thing happens with Amy.
She ends up having to stay in control.
So there's that beautiful moment in the gallery when the doctor
asks, uh, Dr. Black, Bill Nye's character to describe, how, how
important, like, Vincent is in, in history, and, and he describes
him and, and it just focusses on, on Vincent sort of feeling all
these emotions.
Then he goes to hug him and and thank him and then they walk off
back to the TARDIS and Dr. Black kind of has a moment of, Oh, oh.
And then he goes, no, it walks off.
It's just beautiful.
I actually think too, Richard Curtesy is funny and writes
comedies.
And I think that that's properly funny as well.
Like that scene, risks being overwrought, I think. you know, the
pop song and the whole kind of thing.
Like, I think it does risk being overall.
But I fall for it every time.
Like it still works.
And he undercuts it because remember that Amy, when she says
goodbye to Vincent for the 1st time, tells him to trim his beard
before he goes to kiss someone.
And then Vincent comes forward into the future and kisses Bill Nye
twice and then says, sorry about the beard.
Um, and then just, just that wonderful moment where Bill Nye
thinks, 0 my god, I've just met Vincent and then goes, no, no, no
no.
You know, I'm a serious, grown-up, obviously, that can't possibly
have happened.
But again, it's sort of played for laughs.
And he kind of has that sway on his feet where he's sort of like
whoa, you know.
You know, this episode, uh, Curtis wanted to call it the eyes that
see the darkness.
Right, which... is a terrible title.
It is a terrible time. very descriptive of, it describes, it
describes what happens in the story.
You know, he sees the darkness in the in the creature, he sees, you
know, the light and dark in the world.
So there is one thing that kind of that annoys me a little bit
about it, which is that, and maybe it works, like, I don't know
enough about Vincent's life to know exactly what actually happens
here.
But just that sort of constant, the trope of the struggling artist
you know, one of the ways that we justify our own sort of poor
treatment of artists is to suggest that all true art comes through
sort of struggle or something like that.
Yeah, and so...
Yeah, yeah that's right.
And so that that sort of insistence that what Vincent is doing is
turning his pain into beauty and stuff.
Like, yeah, okay.
It does seem like a, a, uh, like a simplistic reading of what's
going on or an appeal to those tropes, and that's just one of the
things that I just find slightly. you know, slightly off-putting
about it.
But I do think that the way that it handles his illness is really
interesting and thoughtful, um, like really good.
I think it's still the only Doctor Who story to ever have a, um, a
helpline message.
Oh, at the end.
Oh, yeah.
Well, because they mentioned killing himself twice, and I think
they may have had to do it in that.
Like, I think legally you're obliged.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a moment at the very, very end where Amy is disappointed
that they didn't do any good.
They didn't make a difference.
Oh, that scene.
It's so beautiful, isn't it?
Because it's what the doctor says when he's hugging her.
And it's, you know, Matt is super awkward and can't tell if
someone's pregnant and like is super weird.
Do you know what I mean?
Like he, he looks like he doesn't understand people.
But that speech about a life being a pile of good things and bad
things and them not cancelling one another out and look, we didn't
fix his mental illness and we were never going to, but we made his
life a little better for a bit.
I think that's lovely. you know, that's terrific.
And the other thing is where, yeah, yeah.
And the other thing is where he kneels down before Vincent starts
to talk depression.
You know, depression is very complicated thing and Vincent just
says, shut up.
I'm trying to work with doing this one.
That's brilliant. love that.
But that's that whole thing of balancing the darkness with the
comedy side.
Like, it's just that lovely little balance.
Yeah.
How, like, um, James said earlier in the in the scenes with um, Dr
Black.
Um, how there's great emotion in there.
But there's also just those little touches of humour as well and
the whole, you know, looking like when he walked off and his
glasses are falling off his face and he's slightly looking like
he's had a bit to drink.
Um, but his line, he said as well, um, Like he said, like the most
beloved, and I think that whole thing of Vincent feeling that he
didn't have much love in his life, you know, he was shunned, and
now he's got somebody saying, well, people did love you, you were
loved, and you are special, and yeah, that that's sort of what
really on the, the viewing yesterday really sort of struck me.
And the bit with, um, You know, that Nathan was talking about with
the doctor and Amy where he's comforting her.
Like he, he doesn't hug her.
He actually like gets in, has a cuddle, like he's really, it's not
just a whole token.
I'm going to stick my arms around you.
It's really like about comforting her and really trying to make
her feel better.
And he still does have that little bit of like, kind of geeky
awkwardness, but it's at the same time, it's just so compassionate
and just such a wonderful thing to say and.
If you do that whole game, like, let's stick another doctor in the
story, like, could you imagine like that working with another
doctor?
Um, I think Tom would just kind of try and leave the room as soon
as possible or maybe like just give her a dirty hanky or a pile of
jelly babies and then try and like get away as quickly as... could
have done it.
If Tom could have done it, Pat could have done it.
Yeah, but I mean, he wasn't really even a hugger, let alone a
cuddler.
Yeah, Silv, I think, could have called...
This would work as a silver story perfectly.
Yeah, that's not a bad.
That's not a bad take.
I think, you know, like what I was thinking of recently was in, Can
you hear me in the Jody episode where Graham tries to speak to her
about his feelings around possible recurrence of his cancer and
she wanders off and says, oh, I'm going to go and play with some
controls here on the target.
That really annoys me.
Yeah, and I thought, I thought, you know, you can be...
Yeah, yeah, but I thought you can be geeky and awkward, but, you
know, actually care.
Yeah, it'll be wise, you know, like the doctors, the doctor is old
and even though he can't tell if someone's pregnant or how old
people are or whatever, he's still wise, you know, and so it's
nice for him to be able to say something, you know, just something
perfect.
I think that speech is incredibly good.
No, absolutely.
And I think that was, yeah, back to, I mean, just we don't want to
concentrate on Jody in this episode, but that was a perfect
opportunity to just kind of humanise her and because geeks are
still people, as we all know, because I put my hand up to being a
geek.
And um, yeah, they still have emotions and they still care and
feel compassion and.
All these big emotions and harking back um, to what Richard was
saying about like how how would children react to watching this
episode?
The whole thing about being excluded.
I mean, there's not many children who, you know, even at that
younger age who can't relate to that feeling of being an outsider
and having people exclude them and how horrible a feeling that
is.
And I mean, everybody would have been through that to some degree
in their life and knows what it feels like.
So, I think that probably would be a level where children could
have jumped on board.
Um, they might not understand, you know, the big feelings of
depression and all that, but they would understand that feeling of
um, people not wanting to be your friend or include you or talk to
you or, you know, not fitting in.
So, Yeah, that probably is a good, a clever slant on on the whole
depression and madness.
And as the doctor, I love that the doctor said, you're not mad as
well.
There's that line at the church.
You're not mad when he starts to do the serious conversation about
depression and then he's like bugger off. kind of thing.
Um, I like to call that Matt Spleening.
Yeah.
I tell a Vincent story?
Yes, please.
So, I have been to Amsterdam a couple of times where there's the
Van Gogh Museum.
Oh, that museum.
Yeah, and I've been there twice and the 2nd time I was by myself
and it was 2008.
Calvin was at home and I was travelling on my own and I spent the
day just wandering around the museum and looking at as much as I
could and reading, obviously, the biographical material that was
available to contextualise each of the paintings.
And I think the collection is actually organised by location, you
know, like the period of time Wednesday and all, Wednesday and
over, when is he, you know, in Paris and so on.
And I spoke to Calvin afterwards.
And he asked me how I was, and I said that I was feeling sad.
And he said why, and I said, because, and, and like this is what, 2
years before this episode comes out?
And it was because of that barrier, that barrier in time, that
means that, that after your death, you no longer have the
opportunity to discover what your reception is going to be like.
And so the very fact that he died with out, ever imagining that
anyone would care anything about his paintings or even remember
who he was.
You know, that he had sold one painting in his lifetime and now
there were art galleries just full of his paintings and they were
super famous and beloved.
And it just, it, it properly made me sad.
And so that final scene is absurdly over the top wishful film and
it doesn't really belong in the Doctor Who universe at all in a
way.
The episode's over.
They're walking back to the TARDIS.
They've said goodbye to Vincent and the doctor just says, oh, no
screw it.
Let's fix this terrible injustice and bring him forward.
And, and, and, you know, all of that stuff about time and, you
know, like not violating the laws of time and all of that.
Who cares?
I'm Richard Curtis.
I don't give a crap about your stupid science fiction rules.
Yeah.
I'm just doing something that should have been done that should
should have been possible.
And I think that that's why I cry in that final scene.
Um, and, you know, like, um, current's performance is so good.
Like so brilliant in it.
It's, it's just tremendous.
It's over the top and schmaltzy and indefensible in all sorts of
ways, but I can't possibly hate it.
I think it's magnificent.
It is magnificent.
I don't even know why we would need to say schmaltzy, it's truth.
Yeah.
Not a big fan of the song.
Well, the song is a little, perhaps a little over the top, but I
don't, I don't find that it detracts from, the emotion of the
scene.
I don't think it really adds to anything either.
I don't think you need the song.
But the emotion of the scene speaks for itself and I, I mean, I
just, I've said a number of times to the people in this room and
on the phone.
I love this story more than practically any other doctor history
and history.
It's not perfect, but it's the emotional core of it that makes me
love it so much.
I grew up, you know, uh, with a mother who was obsessed with
Vincent.
Wow.
And so, you know, had had that artwork, you know, like prints, but
on the walls around the house and, you know, coffee table books
with them.
Like, I love Vincent.
I also was at that museum in 2008 in Amsterdam, not at the same
time, Nathan.
And It was, it was just such a moving experience because of what
what that man meant.
I knew his history at that point as an adult.
I knew what, you know, what he'd gone through.
And knowing, knowing that sort of loneliness and depression, pain
and that he'd created such beautiful artwork was just, like that
was beautiful to me.
Like it was, it was a, like it was really, it was a really moving
experience.
And it doesn't need to be perfect as well.
Yeah, you like James just said like, oh, it's not perfect.
Well, does it need to be perfect if you absolutely loved watching
it?
Like does it need to be perfect?
So for James, it really, it was perfect, really, because it's like
he absolutely loves it.
And I mean, so do I. And I think anybody who does who disagrees is
really just not my friend, quite frankly.
And there's the title of this.
I wonder how well it sits.
No, I think it all does.
The comedy with the tragedy.
You can't, you see, we lost a friend, a very close friend last
year.
Um, uh, you, making light of suicide, really, even in a narrative
form, sits awkwardly with anyone who's lost anyone in their family
regardless of how they've lost them.
But I do feel this works.
A, because as you said earlier, Fiona, Doctor Who takes everything
out of the situation and puts it into Doctor Whodom.
Yeah.
So, it exists under its own, under its own exigencies, but I don't
find the depth in the tragedy of his loss.
I find it in the tragedy of his not recognising his own brilliance
while he was here.
And that is where the emotional truth lies in this.
And again, it's the mirror of Amy not realising why she feels lost
or not realising that love that she didn't allow really herself to
express to the person she was committed to and who gave her an
absolutely open heart.
And in return, she was still playing the offer.
She was still playing big and playing playing strong.
But this is the episode where we get to explore what that is like
and how truth is actually much, much faster.
It really is a field of wheat, field of corn waiting to ripen or a
field of wheat waiting, you know, waiting to ripen, waiting to be
harvested.
So the metaphors are very strong.
I, I, suspect Curtis is such a good rider that he's, he thought
about all of this.
But it's like any analysis of any work at work, whether it be
writing or music or painting.
It's already there.
All the critic does, all the observer does is unpick it, but
there's a lot more in it than we could even say.
We're just touching on the emotional aspects and the construction
when it's a good piece of work, it all comes together perfectly.
So I suspect we could spend a lot of time on picking this and
finding metaphors for the truth of life.
Well, dear listener, that's all we have time for this week.
We will be back next week to drop round to James Corden's place to
ruin his life in the lodger.
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us at flights through entirety on
Facebook, at FT podcast on Twitter, and on our website
FlightthroughEntirety.com, where you'll find links to our other
podcasts, Bondfinger and Jody into Terror.
Until next time, let's hope that we've all remembered to give our
beards a trim, the next time we give you a big kiss.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Does that make Fiona upbeat for this one?
That woman's flight through entirety, starring Nathan Bottomley
James Selwood, Richard Stone, and Fiona Tommy.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Balancing the Darkness, was recorded on the 14th of
February 2021 and released on the 16th of May.
Thank you to everyone who's written in to say that they'd love to
arrange for me to wake up to a garden full of sunflowers.
They do give me hives and hay fever, though, so I will appreciate
the gesture, but you will be sneezed on.
What do you think?
I think we've probably got an out.
Fiona, what do you think?
You don't have to anything add anything if you don't have anything
to add.
I did, you could not think earlier, but I did.
Yeah, because you're the person here with children.
Children, one of them fortunately walked in the door quite quietly
earlier after a big night out on the town.
So how time has progressed?
There's the sound that you can notice.
No, no, that was the dog, the sound that Nathan noticed.
My favourite bit, which we haven't mentioned, this is probably a
tag, is he bitching about Michelangelo and Picasso.
Oh, yes.
In Gainsborough is a proper painting.
Yes, yeah.
And then we got the doctor is a little bit of a wine and cheeser
with his mates down at the posh club.
That is funny, isn't it?
Like, it's a very pert we thing to say.
Yeah, the whole, the whole thing is about, you know, Vincent being
the greatest painting ever and the doctor himself says it later
on.
But when he's by himself in the Tartars, he wants something much
more representational and something with a little bit more sort of
painterly skill.
I found Joshua Reynolds missing.
You know that?
It's funny.
Like the Picasso be a ghastly old goat, which I think is very mild
actually compared to what he was doing.
I like 2 eyes.
I don't know the face.
And Michelangelo being a whinge.
And it's so shocking too, because whenever the doctor does that
sort of name dropping stuff.
Normally, it's, you know, you know, I knew Houdini or, you know
like I was great friends with da Vinci or whatever, but it's not, I
met them when they were just intolerable. so funny.
And he's so bored as well.
Like, I love how bored he is in that scene.
He's just terrific.
I love it when he's sort of bored and shot.
Yeah, and that comes in later with the power of, was it?
What's the episode?
Is it the power of...
Three, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, how he just kind of goes and paints a fence and mows a lawn
and.
Yeah, which it's lovely, like part of Matt, that whole, how he's
got that real restless energy, like he's just, he's somebody you
you can't, and even this, um, Oh, just thinking about too, the
vampires of Venice that I'm not sure if you record it or not.
But there's a bit where he sits in that throne and he's just, he
doesn't just sit down in the chair.
He sits there and he kind of squirms himself in and gets comfy and
yeah, he's sort of someone who's in perpetual motion.
He's never just standing there doing nothing kind of guy.
He's um, got all that. love that physicality.
So do I. That is one of the things I love about his doctor.
Yeah, and the floppy hair, that doesn't go.
Yeah, stray either.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
I love the way he says the word important.
Do you listen?
It's my favourite thing about his performances when he says...
It's great.
Oh.
He says important.
I know exactly what you mean.
Yes.
The f the fowls are great.
Yeah, it's a T. the properties and all of that.
He says it like a posh kid, but I still like it.
All right.
Love that.
I think we'll wind it up.
I'm going to do the thing, and again, it's good night, and then
James, and then Fiona, and then Richard.
Yeah, yeah, done.
Well, dear listener, that's all we have time for this week.